Nigeria’s minister of communications, innovation and digital Economy, Bosun Tijani has launched the Three Million Technical Talents (3MTT) on Wednesday, an initiative that aligns with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s goal to create 1 million jobs within his initial two years in office.
The minister expresses optimism that over half of Nigeria’s youth could become valuable technology talents worldwide.
Tijani states, “I am confident, relying on LinkedIn’s projections, that Nigeria has the potential to address approximately 23% of the existing global shortage in technology talents.”
He explained that the first batch of participants will learn twelve skills which includes cloud computing, animation, cybersecurity, Dev Ops, software development, Data analysis and Visualization, data science, game development, UI/UX design, product management, AI machine learning.
“The courses these participants will be taught will help scale the program to achieve the 3 million target. And to also make them employable” he added.
According to the Minister, over two million applications were submitted within the month of the first training, while the first batch was used to test run the program, the second batch focused on 30,000 participants who started their training in February 2023.
This is as the anticipated unemployment rate for 2023, as per Businessday’s report, is expected to rise to 40%, compared to the reported 30% in 2022.